Monsanto paying $930M to buy The Climate Corp. to help farmers harvest data

It’s sunny skies today for The Climate Corp., a 7-year-old San Francisco company that sells insurance to farmers and uses weather data to better predict crop yields.

Monsanto, the giant St. Louis based seed company, announced today that it is paying $930 million for the company.

The Climate Corp., which is led by former Google employee David Friedberg, established an engineering office in Seattle last year in part because of its proximity to Amazon Web Services. The company scored $50 million in funding in June 2012, including investments from Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Google Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures, Atomico, Glynn Capital, and Western Technology Investment. At the time, total funding stood at $110 million.

Formerly known as WeatherBill, The Climate Corp. crunches huge amounts of weather data, using the information to provide insurance to farmers who can lock in profits even in the case of drought, excessive rains or other adverse weather conditions. It now employs about 200 people, with 20 folks in Seattle.

Comments

Guest

Cool, smart move by Monsanto. With the ag industry being at the forefront of autonomous vehicles and use of big data in equipment, it makes sense. Most people don’t realize that farms already have autonomous equipment running around. Collecting data on yields and spray application based on GPS and autosteer GPS guidance. The big farms save millions every year by utilizing data, minimizing overspray of chemicals, optimizing soil use, etc. There’s a lot of high tech out in the fields now, people just don’t realize it.